re: keeve -concentration of yeast in apple juice

[Howard]

I would like to know if anyone has an approximation for the concentration of naturally occurring yeast in juice.  I do not have access to apples this year - the harvest in the US midwest has been a disaster for the amateur cider maker (and more importantly for the farmers).  I do have access to "heritage" apple juice which has been ultraviolet pasteurized with no preservatives added.  I  used this souirce years ago when I first started making cider and it makes a more than passable drink. 

I understand that the keeving process requires low concentrations of yeast as well as nutrients.  My understanding also  is that the nutrients are further diminished by addition of PME and Calcium (both of which I have).  My hope is that I can chaptalize the  juice to 1.070, add the PME and Calcium when appropriate, and innoculate the juice with a small amount of yeast. 

And there's my question.  How much yeast should I use?  I'm planning on making 30 gallons of dry cider my usual way and 5 - 6 gallons using the keeve method.  Should I chop up a dozen apples from the organic grocer and toss them in?  Add 1 gm of dry commercial cider yeast? 30 cc liquid yeast?  Also, should I lightly sulfite the juice to slow down fermentation even more? 

Thanks in advance for your advice.
Howard

[Chris Rylands]

Hi Howard, after reading your post, it seems to me that some things will be really hit or miss on this batch for you. I do know that wild yeast will fluctuate from year to year and the amount of pectin too. These will greatly affect a successful keeve. You may try a local university in your area on the yeast concentration question. You may get lucky where someone is following that. 

Depending on how dry your cider goal is, I am not sure if keeving will be worthwhile. Even if your juice has no preservatives  and it does keeve, adding a commercial cider yeast I think will still aggressively end up consuming most all of your sugars. I think that adding the sulfite tablets and or slowing down the yeast velocity by cooling the cider to 41deg F the inevitable will still occur. A dry possibly very dry cider. I suppose that it may be possible to keep adding sugar until the other required yeast nutrients run out so u have some residua sweetness. But if you want dry  not clear as why go to the trouble of keeving? You may try to add a pre-started wild yeast mix instead of commercial. The wild should die off before the commercial.

You could try and pick a bucket of small wild apples press a gallon of that juice and start an active ferment on that batch. Then add that yeast instead of commercial. I would make sure that the pH of the purchased cider is where it really needs to be because getting yeast levels up to where they need to be in the UV-dead juice may be a real race against mold.

Sent from my iPhone

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[Howard]

Thanks for your response. I want a sweet carbonated cider. Well, my spouse wants a sweet carbonated cider. I will ferment the other 30 gallons dry. I have made cider that I've back sweetened and carbonated, then Stove-top pasteurized and it is very good. Still, I thought it would be fun to experiment.

So here is what I have done. I took 6 gallons pressed and UV pasteurized juice (SG 1.064, pH3.4) and sulfited the batch. Next day I added 3 tbl powdered pectin dissolved in 2 cups juice. I then added the PME and 6 hours later I added the CaCl2. Next day I added about 1 1/2 oz Wyeast 4184 mead yeast from a smack pack that I did not smack (no added nutrients). This is about half the yeast available.

Here is my thinking: my understanding is that keeving works because PME and calcium cross link up pectin and form the "chapeau brun" which floats to the top because of CO2 produced by slow fermentation. Nutrients get trapped in the cap. Pressed and pasteurized juice I think will be very low in pectin so I added some. No idea how much to add so I added enough for a batch of jam. I added the sulfite to keep wild bad things at bay. I deliberately used the sweet mead yeast because people routinely complain about how much of a nutrient hog it is and I deliberately underpitched it without its nutrient broth.

I'm hoping that the pectin and nutrients will get crosslinked in the cider before the yeast gets going. If some kind of chapeau forms over the next week or two, I'll rack the cider off and see what happens. If things progress too fast I may lightly sulfite when I rack again to slow things down. Absolute worse case is the batch gets irreparably contaminated and I have to pitch the lot. On the other hand the second worse case is it ferments to dry. Like the other 30 gallons I've got going. But it might work, so it seemed worth a shot.